Bread Upon the Waters (58 page)

“I’m not a baby,” Caroline said. “Don’t you think it’s about time I was told what’s happening with this family?”

He looked at his daughter consideringly. “You’re right,” he said. “It is about time you knew what’s happening with this family. It’s about time we all knew. Eleanor left Georgia because some people who didn’t like what Giuseppe put in the paper bombed their house and threatened to kill Giuseppe and maybe Eleanor, too, if they stayed on.”

“Oh, Christ,” Caroline said. He had never heard her say Christ before. “And Giuseppe wouldn’t leave?”

“The last Eleanor knew he was sitting up at night in the dark with a shotgun in his lap.”

Caroline put her hand to her mouth and began to bite at a nail. She hadn’t done that since they had broken her of the habit when she was seven. “She’s right to go back,” Caroline said. “Her place is with her husband. She shouldn’t ever have left.”

“How will you feel if something happens to your sister?” He tried to keep his voice from sounding harsh.

“I’ll feel terrible,” Caroline said. “But I’ll still think she was right to go back. Daddy…” She reached out and touched his hand. “This is an unlucky house. We ought to get away from it. Right away. Before it’s too late. Look what’s happened here—you nearly got drowned and you nearly died. I got hurt in the car accident with George…”

“Honey,” Strand said, “you’re lying. It wasn’t any accident. He hit you and broke your nose. You were lucky you weren’t raped.”

“How do you know all this?”

“I have my secrets, too. Like everybody else, honey. Actually, you didn’t fool the doctor.”

“I had to tell him. I asked him not to tell you. I was afraid of what you’d do.”

“The doctor told Mr. Hazen. Mr. Hazen beat your handsome young friend to a pulp.”

“He deserved it. He said I was a tease. Only what he said was worse. These days, you go out once with a boy, if you don’t put out, they think they can call you anything they want. Daddy…” She appealed to him. “Nobody teaches you the rules.”

“Well, you know them now.”

“I sure do. Does Mummy know, too?”

“No. But she will. Because I’ll tell her.”

“All right.” She sounded hostile. “But tell me something. When you started going out with her, what did
you
do?”

Strand laughed. “Fair question, honey,” he said. “I tried.”

“What did she do?”

“She said stop. And I stopped.”

“Times’ve changed,” Caroline said sadly. “Nowadays boys like George with their cars and fancy clubs and rich fathers think they have the droit du seigneur or something. A sandwich, a drink, a movie and then if you don’t open your legs you’re a peasant. If I’d had my tennis racquet with me, Mr. Hazen wouldn’t’ve had to beat him up. At least Professor Swanson
begged.
Daddy, you don’t know how hard it is to know what to do. I know you didn’t like that boy. Why didn’t you say something?”

“There’re things that one generation learns that another generation never dreams of,” Strand said. “All charts get quickly outdated. Consider yourself lucky. You learned your lesson and it only cost you a broken nose. Be more careful with Romero. His blood is a lot hotter than your friend George’s.”

“Daddy,” Caroline said levelly, “you disappoint me. You’re a racist.”

“On that happy judgment I must leave you.” Strand stood up. “I have to go have a word with your mother,” he said. He left Caroline holding back tears, pouring herself a second cup of black coffee.

Leslie was sitting in a robe at the window seat, staring out at the ocean, when Strand came into the room. He went over and kissed the top of her head gently. She looked up and smiled. “I guess you’re feeling better,” she said.

“Much better,” he said. He sat down beside her and took her hand. “I just had breakfast with Caroline. She told me about Eleanor.”

Leslie nodded. “I did everything I could to stop her. I asked her to talk to you. She wouldn’t.”

“I know. Caroline knew that much. Did Eleanor speak to Giuseppe?”

Leslie shook her head. “She said she didn’t want to argue with him, either. What’re we going to do, Allen?”

“I know what I’m going to do. I’m going to call Giuseppe.” He went over to the telephone next to the bed. There was a small console with buttons on it to call other rooms in the house and outside lines. He pressed an outside-line button and dialed Giuseppe’s number. By now he had memorized it. When Giuseppe said “Hello,” Strand spoke quickly. “Giuseppe,” he said quickly, “this is important. Don’t hang up until you hear what I have to say. Eleanor’s on her way back to Georgia.”

There was silence on the other end for a moment. Then Giuseppe said, “That’s good news.” His voice was toneless, exhausted.

“Has anything happened there?”

“Not yet.”

“Giuseppe,” Strand said, “I want you to tell her that she can’t stay, she’s got to turn around and come right back.”

“You want,” Giuseppe said. “What’s that got to do with it?”

“Listen, Giuseppe, she got her job back, she’s due to start on January second, she’s been promoted, she has a big career ahead of her in a job she likes, in a city she loves. You can’t let her throw it all away. Giuseppe, I can’t let you kill my daughter.”

“That’s not how I think of her, Allen,” Giuseppe said. “I think of her as my wife. It’s about time she realized that. And the wife’s place is at the husband’s side. It’s an old Italian custom. Maybe you’ve forgotten that I’m Italian.”

“Being Italian doesn’t mean that you have to be a martyr. And for what? A miserable little country newspaper that even Eleanor says a parcel of high school kids could do a better job on than you two.”

“I’m sorry that she thinks we’re so inept,” Giuseppe said. “But that doesn’t change anything. When I married her I didn’t promise I was going to win the Pulitzer prize for journalism. All I did was promise to love and cherish her, forsaking all others until death did us part. I’m happy to see that she remembers she signed the same contract.”

“You’re acting like a maniac,” Strand said. “I’m afraid I have to hang up now, Mr. Strand,” Giuseppe said politely. “I have to clean up the house and get some flowers and some stuff for dinner and a bottle of wine to celebrate the reunion. Thanks for letting me know she’s on her way home.”

“Giuseppe…” Strand said helplessly, but Giuseppe had already hung up.

Leslie was still sitting in the window seat, staring once more out at the ocean, her face emotionless. “Did you know there was a chance she was going back?” she asked.

“Yes. She told me she was going to try to forget him. If she couldn’t, she said, she would go back. She didn’t try hard enough, I guess.”

“Sex,” Leslie said tonelessly. “I suppose she’d call it passion. Love. What damage those big words can do. I did everything I could to try to stop her. I asked her how she could go off like that knowing that every time the telephone rang from now on we’d be terrified it would be a message that she was dead.”

“What did she say to that?”

“That she knew the feeling—she’d had it ever since she left Georgia. That we’d have to learn to live with it. I tried to keep it from Caroline, but I’m sure she guessed. How much does she know?”

“Just about everything. I felt I had to tell her. There’ve been too many secrets up to now.”

“It’s natural to try to protect the young.”

“And the old,” Strand said. “Christmas, before I got lost in the fog, I had a talk with Caroline. She said there was a conspiracy in the family to protect me, too, keep things from me. You were in it, too, she said.”

“So I was,” Leslie said calmly.

“She intimated that there were things you hid from me.”

“What things?”

“That you put Caroline on the pill on her sixteenth birthday.”

Surprisingly, Leslie laughed. “How dreadful,” she said. “In this day and age.”

“But you didn’t tell me.”

“I guess I didn’t think you were in this day and age,” Leslie said. “Are you so anxious to join your contemporaries, dear?”

“Yes.”

“Let me see…” Leslie squinted, as though searching the distance for further revelations. “What other sins have I committed that I’ve hidden from you to keep you happy in your illusions? Oh, yes. Of course. I arranged for Eleanor to have an abortion when she was seventeen. Would you like the details?”

“Not really.”

“Wise old husband and father,” Leslie said. “I also knew that she had a lover twice her age, a married man with three children, when she was in college. And she didn’t work to save the money for that car she drove in. He gave it to her. Transportation, too, can be a sin, can’t it? And while we’re at it, I conspired with our dear Jimmy to hide it from you that he was stoned out of his mind on marijuana almost every night and rather than have him leave our apartment once and for all I let him keep the stuff under my brassieres in my bureau. Would you have been happier if I had let him wander the streets?”

“No, I wouldn’t.”

“More news from the front,” Leslie said. “Russell called yesterday with some happy information. He asked me not to tell you. But you’ll probably hear soon enough and it’s better if you find out from me than if you read it in the papers. If he can’t shut her up somehow—and soon—his wife is going to name me, among quite a few other ladies, as a correspondent in her action for divorce.”

“That bitch.”

“She says she has proof. Conroy swears he saw me go into Russell’s apartment one day when I was in New York for my weekly lessons. He says I stayed two hours.”

“Russell said he’d seen you. I wondered why you didn’t tell me.” Strand spoke calmly, waiting for the explanation.

“They’re both right. I went to his apartment and Russell did see me and the lunch took two hours. The reason I went was that I was worried about you. I don’t think you can stand another year of living in the same house with all those boys and I asked Russell if he could persuade Babcock to let us live off the campus by ourselves. I didn’t say anything about it because I didn’t want you to think I was fighting your battles for you. Do you think I’m lying?”

“You’re not in the habit of lying.”

“Thank you,” Leslie said. “But Conroy wasn’t wrong by much. It was the first time I’d been alone with Russell and suddenly I remembered certain dreams I’d had about him and I realized that I thought about him a great deal of the time and that I wanted him.” She spoke flatly, as though going through a speech she had memorized. “And I’m still enough of a woman to know when a man wants me. And I knew Russell wanted me. But he didn’t say anything and neither did I and we ate our lunch and he said he’d talk to Babcock and I went back across town for my three o’clock lesson. Are you disgusted with me?”

“Of course not,” Strand said gently. “If you must know, I’ve come closer than that. Considerably closer. If a certain lady had been at home when I telephoned her from Grand Central Station…” He left the sentence unfinished. “Secret sinners all,” Leslie said. “It’s about time we unburdened ourselves. Our imperfections are the bonds that hold us together. We might as well recognize them. While we’re at it,” Leslie said, intoning, rocking gently back and forth, like a child crooning to itself, with the oceanic sunlight streaming through the window shaking her long blond hair glitter, “did you know about Caroline’s biology teacher?”

“I got a letter from the biology teacher’s wife.”

“I heard from a more accurate source. Caroline. She told me she was crazy about him but he was so awful in bed she dropped him. Girl talk. The sexes mingle, but they’re short on communication. Do you love Caroline—or me—or Eleanor—any the less for all this?”

“No,” he said. “Maybe I’ll love you in a different way. But no less.”

“While on the subject of sex,” Leslie went on, “there’s Nellie Solomon. Did you know she’s having an affair with Jimmy?”

“Who told you?” For the first time since he had come into the room Strand was shocked. “She did.”

“I had lunch with Solomon. He didn’t say anything about it.”

“For a very good reason,” Leslie said. “He doesn’t know. Yet. But he will soon. She’s going to follow Jimmy to California. They’re going to get married. That’s why she told me the whole story. I guess she wanted my blessing. If she did I’m afraid she’s in for a disappointment.”

“When did she tell you all this?”

“When I was staying with Linda, right before we left for Paris. I tried to get hold of Jimmy, but he wasn’t in town.”

“What about that dreadful Dyer woman?”

“Oh, you know about her, too?” Leslie wrinkled her nose in distaste.

“I met her.”

“Jimmy seems to be able to handle them both.” Leslie smiled ironically. “Do you think we ought to be proud?”

“I think he’s acting disgracefully all around.”

“He is. And in the long run he’ll suffer for it. But in a case like this, a young boy and a woman maybe fifteen years older than he, you have to put most of the blame on her.”

“She’s not a member of my family.”

“She will be. Unless they come to their senses before it’s too late. Oh, dearest, dearest Allen, please don’t take it so hard. They’re grown-up people, our children, and they have to lead their own lives.”

“They’re doing it damn badly.”

“Forget them for a few years. Let’s concentrate on leading our own lives—well.” She stood up and put her arms around him and kissed him. “As long as I know you’re all right, I can be happy, no matter what else happens. If we make their lives miserable with our disapproval, we’ll be miserable too and they’ll fly from us. Permanently. Let’s be gentle with them. And most of all, let’s be gentle with ourselves. Let’s hold our peace and wait for them to come back. As Eleanor said, we’ll have to learn to live with it. Whatever
it
is. Now I think the confessional box is closed for the day and it’s time for breakfast. Will you join me in a second cup of coffee?”

He kissed her, then followed her downstairs, a wiser although not necessarily a happier man than he had been a few minutes before when he had climbed the same stairs.

It was snowing the next morning. Strand was sitting in the living room looking out over the dunes as the snow drifted down, powdering the spikes of grass, drifting into the gray sea. It was nearly noon and he was alone. Leslie had gone into the village with Mr. Ketley in the pickup truck to do some shopping. Caroline had come down late for her black coffee and had gone back to her room saying that she had some letters to write. There was a slight hum of machinery off in the servants’ wing which meant that Mrs. Ketley was working there. Strand had a book in his hands but he allowed himself to be lulled by the slow rhythm of the falling snow outside the window. The front doorbell rang and he knew Mrs. Ketley couldn’t hear it over the noise in the laundry room, so he heaved himself to his feet and went to the door. He opened it and Romero was standing there. A taxi from the village stood in the driveway, its motor going.